Long Live the King
by AM83220
Summary: What if Hob hadn't been gunned down by Robo-Caine in "RoboCop 2"?


**Long Live the King**

Within the multiverse are an almost infinite number of parallel universes existing side by side. Many vary wildly from one to another, yet all trace back to exactly the same beginning. As time has progressed in each version of reality, however, a seemingly trivial difference in one universe has frequently led to a vast divergence from the events of an otherwise identical universe. Very often this difference amounted to a single life, one person acting as the fulcrum upon which destiny turned-or whose absence in the world sent fate spiraling down a different path.

The great and the infamous of history are naturally very well represented among this select group, yet an even greater number are people unknown to the record of the ages in any dimension, seemingly ordinary folk whose lives would at first glance appear to have made no difference whatsoever.

Gregory Poulos, city councilor under Mayor Marvin Kuzak of the city of Detroit in the year 2044 A.D., was one such individual. In the world you know, Poulos betrayed the Mayor to the Omni Consumer Products mega-corporation, the OCP. In the one we will examine here he never had that chance.

ΩΩΩΩΩ

This was the kind of opportunity which came along once in a lifetime, and Greg Poulos had no intention of letting it pass him by. If this mysterious backer actually bailed out the city and paid its debt to the OCP, Mayor Kuzak was certain to be re-elected in a landslide, and as an ally of the Mayor and a city councilor he would certainly prosper.

That prospective benefit, however, paled into insignificance compared to the rewards the OCP would surely heap upon him for alerting them to this situation; they might even go so far as to put _him_ in charge of Delta city once it was completed!

The mere thought sent a surge of energy through Poulos' portly frame as the mustached, glasses-wearing man quickened his pace still further, hurrying down the hall toward his office. He felt no guilt over betraying his old friend, only a barely contained excitement at his own suddenly much brighter future.

"Janet, hold all my calls!" he barked to his secretary as he entered, huffing and puffing from both his exertion and his exhilaration.

At fifty-five years of age, Gregory was thirty pounds overweight and had a family history of heart disease. He had also been a cigar smoker for the past three and a half decades and his virtual sprint to his office was the most exercise he'd had in weeks.

Without warning his left arm seemed to go numb. He paused swaying in the doorway of his office, struggling to breath. A piercing pain erupted in his chest as cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He crumpled to the floor, victim of a myocardial infraction. By the time the paramedics arrived at the scene he was dead and the ensuing resuscitation efforts proved unsuccessful.

ΩΩΩΩΩ

Unlike most of the rest of Detroit, the underground parking lot of the Omni-Consumer Products world headquarters was both well-lit and secure. There were no burned out or broken lights, no homeless people seeking shelter in the structure, no drug-addicted junkies lying in wait to mug the affluent. Ordinarily this apparent immunity to the decay afflicting the rest of the city would have irritated Marvin Kuzak, but not today. Today it only made it all the easier to see the expression on the Old Man's face when he revealed the mounds of cash.

"This represents full payment of the debt the city owes to your company," Mayor Kuzak said, gesturing to the open back doors of the armored car parked a few feet away. It was a damn shame there were no reporters here to document his triumph, but the press would find out what had happened soon enough, and it would be front page news! He had done the impossible and singlehandedly saved the city of Detroit!

"How?" the Chairman of the Board of the OCP hissed, his eyes figuratively shooting fire. "How did you scrape together this much?! The city is broke!"

"Not anymore," the Mayor beamed. "An anonymous benefactor came to the rescue of Detroit."

"'Anonymous benefactor,'" the Chairman of the Board sneered. "You expect me to believe that?" By the elderly man's side that toady of his, Donald Johnson, shifted uneasily.

"I don't care what you believe. The debt is paid," Mayor Kuzak concluded. He turned on his heel and walked toward his limousine, leaving one of the most powerful men in the world fuming impotently behind him.

Oh, this was **sweet**!

As he settled comfortably back into the Corinthian leather seats, Marvin Kuzak turned his mind to fulfilling his side of the deal he'd made with the kid. The people of Detroit would never understand the lengths to which he'd had to go to in order to save their city, so it was essential that they never find out. He pondered the matter as his limousine made its way back to City Hall. By the time the long black car eased itself into his reserved parking space, he thought he'd hit upon a solution.

ΩΩΩΩΩ

"Officer Lewis, Officer Murphy," Sgt. Reed greeted them as they entered his austere office. "Please, have a seat."

"I'm talking to you now as the Police Union representative and negotiator," he clarified.

"I'm not going on strike again," Lewis declared forcefully. Robocop said nothing, his visor fixed firmly on the black Sergeant seated behind the desk.

"I'm not asking you to," Reed clarified. "In fact, we've just gotten an offer from the Mayor to settle the strike. He's offering to reinstate our pensions and increase salaries by 5%."

"That sounds great! So what's the catch?" Lewis questioned.

"Mayor Kuzak put a few conditions on the offer. First, now that we've taken down Caine and his drug-dealers, he wants the department to concentrate on quality of life crimes. He also wants the two of you to accept promotions to Detective and transfers to Homicide."

"Why?" Robocop asked in his mechanically resonant voice.

"Because he wants to portray you as the city's hero," Sgt. Reed explained, "and he wants to share in your reflected glory by being seen to reward you. The same with you, Lewis," he nodded at the policewoman.

"So he wants to use us as propaganda pieces?" Lewis asked with a scowl.

"He does," Reed agreed, "and he's made it clear that this condition is not negotiable."

Sgt. Reed leaned forward across the deck toward his two officers.

"I can't force you to accept this. It's your choice," he concluded quietly.

Lewis paused in uncharacteristic hesitation. She liked being a beat cop and the idea of being used as a public relations prop didn't sit well with her. Still, this was a chance to settle the strike once and for all, mostly on their terms, to restore the pensions and salaries which had been slashed. Could she really pass that up?

She turned toward her partner, ready to take her lead from him. He turned toward her, then back to Sergeant Reed.

"I will accept the promotion and transfer," Robocop assented.

She should have expected that decision. Of course Murphy would want to save the pensions, the families, of his co-workers. And she could do no less.

"I will too," she agreed.

ΩΩΩΩΩ

Eight years later . . .

Hob parked his royal blue 7000 Sux in his reserved space in the private lot adjoining his building. Exiting the car the six foot one, brown-haired twenty-two year-old stretched his lean frame before closing and locking the driver's door.

As he strolled toward the doorway of his building a raggedly dressed, bearded man about twenty feet down the block hurried up toward him. The apparently homeless man's left hand was extended out beseechingly as he begged for loose change.

Hob's right hand dove into his suit jacket, but instead of his wallet he pulled out a nickel-plated Desert Eagle .44 Magnum and leveled it at the approaching individual's torso.

"Drop it," Hob ordered coldly.

The bleary-eyed man scowled, hesitating for a second before letting the still-unopened switchblade which had been concealed in his right hand fall to the pavement.

"If I ever see you in this neighborhood again, I'll put a bullet through you. Understand?" Hob asked warningly.

With a grunt the man started to move away, stopping at the click of the weapon's hammer being drawn back.

"Do you understand?" Hob pointedly asked again, menace coloring his voice.

The man's tongue flicked out, licking at his cracked lips. "Yeah. Yeah, I understand," he admitted.

Making a shooing motion with his free hand, Hob kept his aim dead steady until the would-be mugger was out of sight. Then he eased the hammer down, flipped the safety back on, and reholstered his legally registered pistol. With a casual kick he sent the switchblade skidding across the sidewalk and down through the bars of a sewer grate.

Visible tension in the man's shoulders and his right hand out of sight behind his back, not to mention the blaring warning of Hob's instincts, had been all he had needed. It was good to know that years of living a soft, easy life hadn't dulled his observational skills or his sense of danger.

And his last eight years, after he had taken control of the Nuke drug ring, had been absurdly easy compared to his first fourteen. With the Mayor shifting the focus of the police department away from his business he had reaped enormous profits, even considering the price reduction he had implemented for his product.

Secure in the lap of luxury Hob had indulged himself by dining on the finest foods and had read dozens of books each week, at last sating both his hunger and his incessant thirst for knowledge. It had been absolutely wonderful for many months. Gradually, however, he had become uncomfortable. A seed of restless discontent had taken root and grown within him. He had tried to ignore it, but the feeling had only increased as time went on. At last he had turned his analytical ability upon himself, seeking to understand what it was about his virtually heavenly existence which was bothering him so much. He remained stymied by the question until in his readings he had stumbled upon a supposed quote attributed to Alexander the Great: "I have conquered the world, and I have no more worlds to conquer!"

The lament had struck a powerful chord within the sixteen year-old. For as long as he could remember he had struggled to survive, to claw his way up from literally nothing to a position of safety and power. Now he had finally achieved his goal, and like Alexander, he had found himself empty of purpose and deeply missing the absent challenge.

It was actually a relief when, shortly after this realization, a few of his dealers were arrested. An angry call to the Mayor had brought the defense that the rate of Nuke addiction was such in Detroit that there was no longer any way to hold the police back.

He could have exposed the Mayor in retaliation, but that would have served no purpose. It was much better to have a Mayor indebted to him in office, even if Kuzak couldn't wholly leash the police. Yet doing nothing was also not an option; that would be an invitation for the police to dismantle his business piecemeal.

The teen had learned long ago that in general the key to dealing with those who could benefit you and those who opposed you alike was exactly the same: determine and utilize the best means of ensuring that they would _want_ to do your will! That was how he had secured Caine's favor, turned Officer Duffy into an informant, taken control of Caine's gang and gained influence over the Mayor, in each case positioning himself as the one who could give the person in question what he most desired. Violence was always an option and sometimes necessary, but it was considerably more efficient and more profitable to turn problems into assets rather than to bury them.

Yet this problem had resisted any easy solution. He could hardly sway the entire police force and, while he was certain he could recruit new spies in the department, that would only frustrate and ameliorate the police efforts to take down his cartel, not prevent them.

Hob had toyed briefly with the idea of literally destroying the police force. He had the manpower, could obtain any special weapons needed from Francis Reynard, the black market arms dealer who had provided the .50 caliber machinegun used in his plan to capture Robocop, and he had been more than confident in his own ability to devise a devastating battle strategy.

The problem was the consequences which would follow such a bold move. Massacring the Detroit police department would spark a massive response from the state and federal governments. The national guard would be called out, martial law would be declared and he and his organization would inevitably fall. It would be a Pyrrhic victory, to take again from his historical readings.

Playing things out as they had stood would have led to his eventual defeat. Those with a fondness for chess metaphors might have said he was looking at eventual checkmate, but Hob had always disdained such comparisons. Enjoyable game though it was, chess was set and static, whereas real life was inherently fluid and changeable. Hence the answer was to shift the parameters of the conflict, in this case by expanding the battlefield. He had at his disposal the sole supply of the most addictive, pleasurable drug yet invented and there would be a market for that not only in Detroit, but nationwide.

Expanding into other cities and states, however, would bring him into conflict with the already established crime cartels therein. Winning such turf wars would take too much time and resources, human and otherwise.

Instead he had sent Angie to make contact with the other organizations, requesting that they serve as his middlemen for Nuke and asking in return for a mere thirty percent of the profits garnered from their Nuke trade. While these diplomatic overtures had been going on Hob had dramatically downscaled his dealing in Detroit, instructing his dealers drop the names of cities he expected would soon have a ready supply of Nuke.

As expected, several of the criminal heads had accepted his offer, thereby taking over for themselves all of the difficulties involved in establishing dealer dens in new cities. Since he remained the only provider of Nuke, even the third of the profits he was taking would vastly increase his income rather than decreasing it. Furthermore, by delegating the dealing to underworld figures in other regions he insulated himself from law enforcement.

Hob had eventually settled on dead-drops as the best means of drug delivery and had selected sites in each of the cities. The chosen derelict homes were purchased under false names, the basement thoroughly secured, and a schedule established for the cartel in question to visit the house and pick up the Nuke shipment his people would have deposited in the locked cellar days before. The member of his organization would have no direct contact whatsoever with the new dealers. Even if his "partners" were caught and wanted to turn state's evidence, they couldn't, since all they would be able to give up was the address where they picked up the Nuke and the Cayman Island account to which they transferred his share of the profits.

The primary danger to him lay in a stake-out of the dead-drop meant to identify and follow the deliverers. In anticipation of this threat he had Angie approach a homeowner he had vetted in each of the neighborhoods in which his chosen "delivery house" was located. That homeowner would receive three thousand dollars a month and his sole responsibility would be to keep an eye out for any signs of a stake-out.

The process of devising and working all of this out had reinvigorated Hob and gotten him moving again. Yes, he'd achieved a great deal and had everything he desired-in the short term. That meant it was time to start looking to and planning for the long term, including finding a new goal.

Lazy living and plenty of good food had actually made him slightly overweight, which was not only disturbing, but a conceivable impediment to his survival! It was a difficulty he had not faced before, since he would never have grown fat on the streets; for much of his life his biggest problem had been finding _enough_ food!

Hob had arranged for instruction from a private martial arts teacher and through that and vigorous exercise he had soon regained his previous slimness. Learning karate had also served the vital purpose of giving him far better hand to hand combat ability. Although he planned to continue relying on outsmarting and outwitting others, having a second degree black belt in reserve was reassuring, not to mention deeply satisfying.

Preoccupied with relieving these memories Hob failed to greet the small lobby's receptionist as he entered.

"Good morning, Mr. Damon," Michael Deveraux offered.

"Morning, Mike," he returned to the man.

Long ago Hob had tried and failed to locate any official records of his existence and had hypothesized that his mother had given birth to him outside of a hospital. He'd addressed this issue by creating a legitimate identity for himself, adopting the name of Gabriel Damon.

Approaching the door behind the reception desk Hob peered into the retinal scanner and heard the door unlock. Pulling it open he passed into the short hall behind it, going down to the third door on his right, opening it and strolling into the main lab.

His best researcher, Melinda McAllister, was already at work, bent over the central table in the room rather than at the advanced modeling computers. The thirty year-old woman's long, raven hair fell down her back, her emerald green eyes fetchingly narrowed in concentration. At the sound of his entrance she looked up and smiled at him.

"Good morning, Mr. Damon," she offered cheerily.

"Good morning, Melinda," Hob responded fondly. "Beating the boss into work, huh? Are you bucking for a raise?"

"I wouldn't say no to one," she rejoined.

"Make a breakthrough on this project and I'll consider it," he offered.

"That's why I got here early this morning! I've been rethinking the circuit configuration we've been using . . ."

Hob listened to and appreciated her words on an intellectual level, while simultaneously appreciating Melinda herself on a sexual level.

Multi-tasking was an essential skill for any successful businessman.

He'd hired Melinda for his specialized tech company start-up eight months ago and since then he'd learned to appreciate not only her drive and intelligence, but her beauty as well. Lately he'd been seriously considering the idea of initiating a less . . . formal relationship with her.

It would have to be carefully done, to avoid any implication of coercion or sexual harassment. Given the way she looked at him sometimes he thought she might not be averse to dinner and drinks with her wunderkind boss if the invitation was properly phrased. And if all went well, then they could follow up with a real date which could evolve into more.

Though Melinda was the first woman he'd ever been truly romantically interested in, Hob was no stranger to physical intimacy; Angie had taught him quite a lot about that. He missed her to this day, her Nuke addiction having claimed her life almost four years ago.

It was a prime example of why he had never considered partaking of the drug himself. Nuke was a source of intense short-term pleasure, at the cost of one's overall health and longevity. That was a trade-off no rational, clear-sighted person would accept. His customer base tended to possess neither of these qualities, however, so perhaps their choice was in fact the best one for them.

Angie's death had served to finalize Hob's decision concerning his next ambition. Aided by his eidetic memory, he had directed his self-education toward learning and reading everything he could about his newly chosen field of endeavor and had legally incorporated his first legitimate company, Cyber Innovations.

The OCP's own cyber division had been all but dismantled after their latest attempt to replicate RoboCop had run amok, killing several dozen people in the OCP headquarters before finally being brought down by a police SWAT team and the original RoboCop. The market void created by the mega-corporation's abandonment of the field had yet to be fully filled, giving his newborn firm a commercial niche to exploit. Small though it was, CI was already gaining a reputation for the quality of the artificial hearts and prosthetic limbs they provided. Though not yet in the black, current projections showed they would begin turning a profit within the next quarter.

That was a tertiary consideration, of course; after all, he hardly needed the money! Much more important was the intellectual effort and challenge involved in striving to reach the pinnacle of his new field. Most important of all was the prize which awaited him at that summit.

RoboCop was still going strong after all these years, in spite of everything he had been subjected to in the course of duty (including Hob's own dismembering of the police officer). And this with tech almost a decade old!

Unlike the vast majority of those his age, Hob held no illusions about his own mortality. His biological body would eventually fail him . . . but a cybernetic form would not. He had no desire for an existence like RoboCop's, as the unmistakable melding of man and machine. No, Hob intended to sacrifice neither his appearance nor his emotions. His plan involved a transfer of his brain into an android body indistinguishable from that of a normal man.

Psychologically he had no fears whatsoever regarding how he would adapt to such a transfer. A bit of bribery-facilitated industrial espionage had produced the archived OCP documents pertaining to the numerous failed cybernetic projects which had followed the success of the first RoboCop. The reports had in the end concurred that it was the original subject's strong will to live and his Roman-Catholic faith which had enabled him to endure his new state without becoming suicidal.

Hob might not possess religious faith, but he had ample and well-justified faith in himself. As for his will to live, he'd proven that beyond question time and time again.

No, the barrier holding him back at present was technological. The machinery and circuitry would need to be miniaturized as much as possible, refined and improved in form and function. It would be perhaps a decade or more before he could even begin to draft preliminary plans for his android form.

Once he'd achieved transfer, though, time would cease to be a serious consideration for him. With his brilliant mind and vast fortune behind him, who could say what conquests he would seek and achieve then?

 _Authors Notes_ : _Hob, the strategically skilled young genius from RoboCop 2, has long been one of my favorite villains in all of fiction! He came so close to winning, and his unique, engaging character was by far the best part of that movie. It was fun to write out this speculation of what his future might have been like, if not for the traitor Polous. Incidentally, Gabriel Damon was the name of the actor who so ably portrayed Hob. Lastly and most importantly, the entire idea of writing this story in the first place was given to me by author 90TheGeneral09. Make sure you check out some of his stories as well!_


End file.
